Svalbard, 12 reasons to choose them.

The Svalbard Islands. An archipelago unknown to most or fascinating and dreamed by a long time for a few travelers, a little crazy like us, who love the extreme north, the cold and the adventures.

I begin with this post without tell you anything about these islands, only the geographical position. They are in the north of Norway, far north, beyond the 80th parallel. The last permanently habited place before the North Pole.

Ny Alesund is the most northerly habited place in the world and has the most northerly post office in the world.

You can begin love them – and perhaps you begin to program them as the next destination – with these 15 photographs, then will come the post. Enjoy the show!

1 – Arrive at Svalbard

They are already a show from the window wet and icy of the airplane!

2 – The abandoned coke mines

Everything has remained intact. The men left and the mines has never been touched (a Svalbard law considers historical everything before 1946, and prohibits removing it).

You can enter. A true historical museum. Always pay attention to the collapse.

3 – Polar Bear

The real protagonist. The territory is its. Here the danger is real and true. It’s not a game. The guides repeats us continuously.

You can’t leave the Pink Zone without a weapon, the core of the town, the only one “free bear”.

Here’s how you go with snowmobile in winter. Look on the back.

4 – Landscape

Totally unspoiled nature where man has never set foot, in variety of colors and shapes.

5 – Glaciers

Many even in summer, with many colors. Indescribable the emotion to being there in a boat to admire these shades of blue and to attend the sound of the piece of ice that breaks away and falls into the sea.

6 – Reindeer

Graze everywhere in these islands to found mosses and lichens. Amazing to think about how they survive in winter at these latitudes.

7 – Artic terns

These birds so aggressive from which to be very careful. Just show them the stick and the terns go away.

8 – Puffin

Beautiful in their funny flying and evanescent when they dive underwater and reappear after several minutes.

9 – Blue Whale

Here! It’s! In a single day we have seen so many in the fjord. Elegant and very big these whales with their splashes and their tail.

10 – Pyramiden

One of the many abandoned settlements. In Pyramiden you can see the history of human stupidity. Russian communism that wanted to seem a paradise for the Norwegian capitalism in a surreal place.

11 – Trekking

Walking in these wastelands, where there are no trails and where you turn armed with rifles and rocket launchers, because you must stave off the bear and leave him alone and only in extreme cases using the shotgun. Walking on the glacier is so different from ours: there isn’t danger crevices and where water creates these so fascinating crannies.

12 – Zodiac

What are we doing well clothes? Spend a few hours on board of Zodiac in the middle of the Arctic, far from everything and everyone, jump over the waves and soaking wet, with rough seas, wind and cold.

One of those experiences that you sometimes do in certain countries and in certain places in which man becomes a worthlessness and where the man being at the mercy of everything. Definitely difficult, but one of the most exciting adventures lived up here!